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UGA may drain Legion Pool for good

FILE/STAFF Catheryn Ball, who will start her junior year at UGA in the fall, uses a blower to clean off leaves and debris from around the pool deck at Legion Pool Monday afternoon. Ball and fellow Summer lifeguards gathered to prepare the pool for opening on May 25, 2006 in this file photo.

The University of Georgia is likely to deep-six historic Legion Pool, but university planners are looking for a space to build a large new outdoor swimming pool, UGA President Michael Adams said in a Thursday news conference.

Built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, the pool is historic — but it’s also so old that UGA maintenance workers can’t find replacement parts when things go wrong, Adams said. And according to Tom Jackson, UGA’s vice president for public affairs, the pool, located near the intersection of Baxter and Lumpkin streets, constantly leaks water.

The Depression-era pool originally was owned by an Athens American Legion post. Once a community pool, its waters are now used mainly by UGA workers and students and their families and guests. It is now owned by the state and operated by UGA.

Adams said he couldn’t say whether the pool’s fate might be influenced by the imminent construction of a building to replace aging Bolton Hall, along with a possible pedestrian bridge over Lumpkin Street.

The state Board of Regents has approved a plan to replace Bolton, UGA’s largest dining hall, at a cost of about $26 million. UGA officials say the larger building that will replace Bolton is slated to go in the same general area — land to the south of Baxter Street and west of Lumpkin Street.

But architects and planners haven’t yet decided exactly where the new building should go.

“We don’t have a design yet,” Adams said. “I do think before the summer is over we will have plans.”

Legion Pool, 75 feet wide by 160 feet long, is scheduled to open for the summer on May 24 and will remain open through Aug. 10.